Mixed bag

First, the bad news: Alabama's child poverty rate surged 14 percent between 2000 and 2003, according to the annual Kids Count study. In 2003, roughly 81,000 poor Alabama children were growing up in homes where no adult had been employed in the previous year, a rate above the national average.

Now for the good news: The study found that the state's high school dropout rate and teen birth rate both fell. So did the infant mortality rate, bucking an unfortunate national trend.

Child poverty is a multifaceted problem, but one step toward a solution is to ensure jobs are readily available to lower-income parents, many of whom live in the relatively undeveloped Black Belt region. That's one reason the Interstate 85 extension and other efforts to attract employers to the area are so important.

Of course, the state also should ensure lower-income Alabamians receive a quality education that gives them a shot at climbing the economic ladder. But that relates back to our education funding system, which relates back to our broken tax system, which is another topic for another novel post.